


melt, thaw, resolve

by 75hearts



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hallucinations, Hypothermia, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, if you don't want a fic about Maedhros Attempts Suicide By Freezing To Death don't read this!!!!, it's just a bad time ok, seriously!!! im not kidding!!! it's a bad time!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 11:25:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17917859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/75hearts/pseuds/75hearts
Summary: Maedhros figures out a way to try to forswear an unbreakable oath. (He fails.)





	melt, thaw, resolve

It was two weeks since the messenger arrived that Maedhros left Amon Ereb and headed north.

Someone stopped him, of course. “My lord? Where are you going?”

He didn’t even glance at them, just kept walking, nearly growling, his face hard. “Tell Maglor I’m forswearing the oath.” Whoever it was disappeared quickly, and nobody else bothered him from there.

He wasn’t, of course. An oath like the one they had taken was unbreakable. There was only one way out, and the oath wouldn’t let him take it, not while it was still unfulfilled. It pulled and tugged, trying to drag him closer and closer to her, waiting for the day that Maedhros would pull a sword on Elwing of Doriath. She was even younger than her brothers had been, a baby even as Men reckoned. It made him sick. But the oath couldn’t be broken.

The oath could, however, let him take a walk. It could let him walk, and at some point it would oblige him to walk back, and hopefully by then he’d be far away and freezing and hungry and surrounded by orcs. The oath would not let him kill himself, but the oath could not stop him from walking into death any more than it stopped his brothers or his father. Any more than it stopped him from going to the parley.

And so he walked.

 

-

 

The orcs avoided him, even as he walked straight into their territory (armed, armored--the oath required that much of him). Ran from the danger in his gray eyes, fled at the sound of his footsteps. They knew him and they feared him. He was the figure in every orc child’s nightmare: the red elf, the tall one, scars and fire, too bright to look at even in the middle of the night, and you don’t even want to know what he’ll do to you. He was held by Melkor and he escaped but he learned his lessons well.

It was just as well, really. The walk was familiar, up the River Gelion, the endless plains of East Beleriand that had once been the domain of Ambarussa. Up and up and up until you could see the mountains. He knew where he was going, and if the orcs would let him get there, so much the better.

 

-

 

He wanted to pray, but he didn’t know who to pray to. Not the Valar. They refused to hear even the echoes of his sorrow, and even if they did hear, they would not give him what he wanted. They gave what was deserved, and he was long past deserving mercy.

 _What he wants_ was prayed for long ago. Fingon had asked for the arrow to fly straight, and it was never even loosed. He has given up on praying.

But that does not mean he did not want. He _wanted_ , more than anything else in the world. Every fiber of his being screamed for it. Every moment was its own exquisite torment and it had been so many years since he had managed to want anything except to _end_. 

It never ended, of course. The oath tugged at his muscles. Eventually it would win, but not today. He kept walking north. He did not stop, for food or sleep or water. There were only two things that could stop him; he would see which got him first.

 

-

 

The ruins of Himring were harder to climb than he expected, but still familiar. The icy cold settled into his bones like coming home. He could see Angband from here, the jagged peak of Thangorodrim clear against an ashen sky. Finally.

The shivering set in faster than he expected, without any of a fortress’s protection from the icy wind. It was fitting, really. Isn’t this what it all came back to, in the end? The cold.

Elenwë died like this, trapped beneath the ice. They all shivered, Fingolfin and Fingon and Turgon and Aredhel, deathly cold. So many years. He had chosen his fortress in the mountain carefully. It was a reminder. Himring, the Ever-Cold.

And then.

The last time he had been cold like this had not been in Himring.

It wasn’t fair. It had been south of here, even further south compared to the plain of Anfauglith, and it was a forest not a mountain.

It had been so, so cold. His voice had given out long before his feet but still he had tried as best he could, the ice crystals of his breath scraping at the rawness of his throat. At first the wind had whipped the screams from his mouth, the shrieking of the wind so loud that he could not hear himself. It felt like screaming into the void.

He was still there when the wind stopped. The landscape was suddenly utterly silent, and it had felt like the world might shatter with the force of every strained rasp.

He did not know when they died. He did not find their bodies. It didn’t matter. He had killed them all the same.

So it was fitting. Twice already he had tried to help someone, a token gesture, too late, and killed them all the same. He could not pray, and so he hoped, that this could be a third. Three times would people freeze to death for him. Three, for the three silmarils.

In the ruins of Himring, the wind did not stop; it picked up. Snow flurried around. Maedhros felt the oath tug at him. He sat there.

 

-

 

It didn’t take as long as he expected for the hallucinations to start. Þauron was first. He had stopped shivering. It was a relief, almost. It was familiar, easy. It was so hot in Angband, so painfully hot, and his clothes were tight and rough against his skin. He helped Þauron take them off, put them aside. After that he was held down, but it was unnecessary; he did not even try to struggle. Þauron was uncomfortably warm, too, but it was at least a little better, with the bare skin of his back pressed into the ice. “Shh,” Þauron said, petting his hair gently, and Maedhros let himself be comforted. The warmth of Angband's fires was good, really, because if he was in Angband, if Þauron was there, because that would mean that none of this had been real. _Findecáno is in Valinor,_ he told himself. _Eluréd and Elurín are in a forest somewhere, laughing, and they are safe. They are all safe_. He could hear himself screaming, but his mouth was closed. _That’s funny,_ he thought, and stifled a giggle. “Shh,” Þauron said again, softly pressing a finger to his lips. “Shh.”

Time had started to get strange. He was not sure if it was a moment later or a lifetime when Þauron was gone. It was still so hot. The air smelled of cooked meat. Of course. Losgar. It was his brother that he smelled. The fire was so close. Urine trickled down his thighs. He hadn’t been able to stop them. Hadn’t tried, really. And now he couldn’t. Couldn’t move. He was glad of that, he thought, but he wasn’t sure quite why. Oh, of course, the oath. If he could move, he would have to try to live. Of course. “I’m coming,” he whispered, voice slurring and cracking on the words. “I’ll be there soon.” The last word was scarcely even a breath before he stopped being able to talk or move at all. His heart was slow and quiet in his chest.

The oath pulled on him, then, harder than it ever had before. It said: you must get up. It burned his muscles, seared them, but he was too weak to get up.

And eventually there was Fingon. Not Findecáno as he had been in the days of their youth, smiling and warm and golden, but Fingon as he was on that terrible battlefield: unrecognizable, a trampled corpse pooled in blood. Parts of him were blue-white with frostbite. The Ice and the Nirnaeth. Maedhros had led him into so much, and now it was time for him to be led. They held hands as Maedhros lost consciousness.

 

-

 

He woke, eyes cracking open to too-bright light. “Fingon?” His throat still hurt, cracking, but he was neither freezing nor burning. He needed water, that was all.

The man who stood above him was not Fingon, of course, and he was startled that he had said that. “No,” he said, voice gentle. “It’s Maglor. Your brother.”

Maedhros blinked a couple of times, sleepily. “Yes, of course.” And it was obvious enough now that he was looking: the light skin, the straight hair worn down and unadorned. The face was still hazy in his mind. “Why am I here?”

“Don’t try to talk just yet. I heard from the scouts that you had gone north and we went to find you. You should know how dangerous it--you’re lucky to be alive. At least it was the weather and not orcs that got you. We rescued you just in time. They were scared you weren’t going to pull through, at first. But it’s okay. We’ve got you. Many of the Noldor are skilled healers for injuries of cold. I have someone making tea--we’ll help you sit up so you can drink it. You need fluids. The rest of the healing we can do while you sleep.”

 

-

 

“How could you?” His voice was a raw whisper. It was the most vulnerable he had sounded in a very long time.

“I had to. You were my brother.”

“Was it the oath?” _If it was the oath, I can forgive you_.

But it was the wrong thing to say; Maglor pulled away, expression mixing shock and horror, but his hand clutched even tighter to his brother’s. “No. I love you, Maedhros, not just because of the oath.”

“Then kill me. Please. Kill me.”

“No! Maedhros, you are not well--”

A sad smile. “I have not been well in a very long time. Please. If you ever loved me, if it is not the oath that was behind my saving, please, please--please, Maglor, please--”

Maglor’s expression had settled firmly on horror now. “You cannot ask me--”

“I can and I do. I want nothing more.”

“Surely you do not mean that.”

“It has been so long. Did you know--have you ever--” He takes a breath. “Try to hold a knife to your throat sometime, or your wrists. Just try. You can get that far and no farther, not even the slightest nick. You can steal medicine, the oath lets you get that far, or tie a noose, but you cannot take more than is safe, cannot kick a chair out from under you. It’s not fear. You can’t, physically. The oath won't let you. It has been _so long,_ Maglor. I have wanted nothing--just this one thing--it is such a small thing. We are going to kill a little girl. I am so much easier. I don’t run, don’t scream. It would be a mercy. I deserve it so much more than she does. _Please_.” A tear ran down his cheek. _Three times,_ he thought inanely. _For the three silmarils._

“I’m sorry,” Maglor said. “I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Maglor’s hand fell away from his. “Won’t,” he said softly, and shut the door, leaving Maedhros with naught but darkness.

 

-

 

It was Maglor that brought it up, next, a quarter century later. They were on the road to the Havens of Sirion. “Can we not--break it--can we not _refuse--_ ”

Maedhros almost laughed; a short, bitter noise came out of his throat instead. He passed his sword over the whetstone viciously, eyes honed on its edge. “Fate is cruel, brother. No. Our oath cannot be broken. I have learned that lesson well.”


End file.
